Chương 46: Breaking Point

The deep winter did not die quietly. It threw one final tantrum. The heavy snowfall that had blanketed the valley for weeks suddenly stopped. Then, the temperature plummeted so rapidly that the very air seemed to crackle. Down in the village, the sudden freeze was terrifying. The thick trunks of the pine trees in the nearby forest let out loud, echoing cracks like musket fire as the sap frozen deep inside their bark expanded and snapped the wood.

Giles was in the center of the village square, his breath turning into thick white clouds the second it left his mouth. He was wearing his heaviest dire-wolf fur coat, but he was still shivering violently.

"Check the gate hinges!" Giles roared to the militia, his voice muffled by the wool scarf wrapped around his face.

"Make sure the iron isn't frozen to the wood! Knock the ice loose!" The men hurried to obey. They struck the iron hinges of the main gate with the wooden handles of their boar spears, shattering the ice that had formed over the metal. Up on the flat roof of the wooden gatehouse, a group of older children were working frantically. They had three large iron kettles suspended over small, contained coal fires. Inside the kettles, the thick pine sap was bubbling.

The intense cold was constantly trying to harden the pitch, forcing the children to stir it continuously with wooden poles to keep it in a liquid state. Standing just below them, on the wooden walkway near the barred gate, was Elias. The villagers stomped their feet and rubbed their gloves together to keep the blood flowing to their fingers. Elias, however, stood perfectly still. His dark traveler's cloak fluttered wildly in the biting wind, but he did not shiver.

His hands rested lightly on the pommel of his ancestral sword. Giles walked past the gatehouse and gave the "Wanderer" an approving nod. The carpenter assumed the mercenary was simply using some advanced technique to ignore the cold. It was comforting to have a hardened veteran standing on the front line. High above the village, Jack stood in his castle. The dense energy of his new Iron Core radiated a steady, comfortable heat from the center of his chest, pushing the worst of the freezing chill away from his skin.

He leaned on his cane with one hand. His other hand rested firmly on the release lever of the primary ballista. Standing immediately to his left was Grim. To Jack's right stood Bones, wearing his iron armor and holding a lethal bolt. Jack looked down at the village. His defenses were as perfect as humanly possible. The palisade was solid. The dry moat was deep and filled with wooden spikes. The caltrops were hidden in the snow. They even had artillery on both levels now.

Down on one of the newly built wooden watchtowers inside the village, Barnaby the blacksmith was making final adjustments to the second ballista. It was slightly smaller than Jack's, built entirely from the melted-down scrap iron of the dead bandits. Three sturdy militiamen stood beside Barnaby, ready to help him haul the heavy iron cranks backward. They were ready for a pack of starving wolves. Then, the horn blew.

The young militiaman stationed at the highest point of the gatehouse blew the horn with everything he had. The deep, mournful sound echoed across the frozen valley.

"Movement!" the boy screamed, pointing a shaking finger toward the tree line. Jack tightened his grip on the release lever. He squinted into the blinding white expanse of the snowfields. The dark line of the forest began to shake. Whole trees shuddered violently, dumping massive loads of snow from their branches. But there was no frantic, chaotic sprinting. There was no wave of skinny hounds yapping and tripping over each other. Instead, a line of massive, dark shapes emerged from the trees.

Jack's eyes widened slightly. These were not the scavengers from the lower mountain slopes. The extreme, sudden freeze had finally penetrated the highest, deepest caves of the mountain peaks. It had driven out the true kings of the mountain. The apex predators of the mountains had arrived. At the front of the line were snow boars. They were not the size of standard wild pigs. These beasts were easily the size of draft horses, covered in thick white fur.

Massive, curved tusks jutted from their lower jaws, looking like yellowed iron plows. Running silently beside them were elite dire wolves. These were not the desperate pack members; these were the alphas. They were heavily scarred, incredibly muscular, and moved with a coordinated precision. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. And walking heavily behind the boars and wolves were the mountain bears. They stood easily ten feet tall at the shoulder.

Their fur was a dark, grizzled gray, so thick and dense it looked like natural armor. Every time one of the bears took a step, the loose snow shuddered around its massive paws.

"By the gods," Giles whispered down in the village, his grip slipping slightly on his boar spear. The sheer size of the beasts completely changed the battlefield. The frontline of giant snow boars lowered their massive heads and charged. They hit the hidden caltrop field perfectly. But the trap failed. The iron spikes had been designed to pierce the soft paws of hounds and regular wolves.

When a snow boar slammed its hardened, split hooves down onto the snow, the immense weight simply crushed the crude iron caltrops straight down into the frozen dirt. The boars didn't even break their stride. They trampled the field flat, creating a safe, packed path for the wolves and bears running behind them.

"They are past the spikes!" Giles roared.

"Brace for the trench!" The giant boars reached the edge of the deep moat. Blinded by rage and the push of the pack behind them, the front line of boars tumbled directly over the edge. They plummeted into the deep pit and slammed onto the sharpened stakes at the bottom. The thick wooden stakes pierced their bellies, and the massive beasts let out horrific squeals of agony that shook the air. Under normal circumstances, the trench would have broken the siege completely. But the boars were simply too large.

It only took a dozen of the massive beasts falling into the pit to completely fill a section of the trench from the dirt floor all the way up to the edge. The deep moat was instantly neutralized. The mountain bears did not hesitate. Showing a terrifying level of intelligence, the massive predators walked directly up to the edge of the trench and stepped onto the groaning, bleeding bodies of the trapped boars.

Using the pile of massive flesh as a bridge, the bears casually walked right over the trench and stepped onto the solid ground directly in front of the wooden palisade.

"Fire!" Barnaby bellowed from the village watchtower. THWACK. The newly built ballista released its tension. A bone bolt shot across the village square and slammed directly into the chest of a mountain bear standing outside the wall. The impact was incredibly loud, but the result was a disaster. The dense wolf bone penetrated the bear's thick outer hide, but the beast possessed a layer of dense winter fat and muscle nearly a foot thick.

The bolt buried itself into the bear's chest, but it did not reach the heart or lungs. The bear roared in fury, snapping the exposed end of the bolt off with a massive paw, entirely unbothered by the mortal wound.

"Wind it back!" Barnaby screamed, his face turning purple as he and his three men desperately grabbed the iron cranks. They strained against the stiff animal sinew, fighting to reload the siege weapon. It was agonizingly slow. Up on the castle, Jack kept his face completely blank.

"We need a lot more iron," Jack muttered internally. He aimed the primary ballista slightly lower, targeting the head of a charging boar that was crossing the flesh-bridge.

"Grim, pull," Jack commanded mentally. The skeletal wolf yanked the crank back in three seconds. Bones dropped a bolt into the groove. Jack fired. Because Grim could reload so quickly, Jack turned his castle into a rapid-fire artillery position. Thwack. Click-click-click. Thwack. Click-click-click. Thwack. Bone bolts rained down from the castle. He successfully dropped two giant boars and pinned an elite dire wolf to the wooden ramp, but there were simply too many heavy targets.

Down below, the bears reached the wooden palisade. They did not try to jump or climb it. Four of the massive mountain bears simply stood up on their hind legs, towering over the ten-foot wall, and threw their immense weight directly against the thick pine logs. CRACK. The entire village perimeter shuddered. The deep pine logs that the skeletons had planted so carefully groaned under the horrific impact.

"Hold the line!" Giles yelled, rushing to the section of the wall where the bears were hitting. The militia men stood on the firing platforms, thrusting their heavy iron boar spears through the small gaps between the logs. They aimed for the bears' faces. A militiaman thrust his spear forward. The iron blade scratched the cheek of a massive gray bear. The bear let out a low rumble, raised a paw the size of a barrel, and casually swiped at the spear. The wooden shaft of the spear snapped instantly.

The force of the swipe wrenched the broken handle out of the militiaman's hands, throwing the man backward off the platform and onto the snowy ground below. CRACK. The bears slammed their shoulders into the wall again. This time, one of the thick pine logs actually splintered. A long crack appeared down the center of the wood. The bindings holding the logs together began to stretch and tear.

"They are breaking the wall!" a villager screamed in pure panic.

"Pour the sap! Pour it now!" Giles ordered, pointing up at the gatehouse. The older children tipped the heavy iron kettles forward. A waterfall of boiling, sticky pine pitch poured over the edge of the roof, splashing directly down onto a giant snow boar and a bear trying to bash the main gate. The boiling sap hit the boar, burning its skin instantly. The boar squealed and thrashed, falling backward into the moat. But when the boiling sap hit the mountain bear, the thick, dense layer of fur acted like a shield.

The sap stuck to the outer layer of the hair, burning the beast just enough to infuriate it, but failing to cook the flesh beneath. The burning bear roared, its eyes completely wild with rage. It dropped to all fours, lowered its massive head, and charged full speed directly at the weakened, splintering section of the pine wall. It hit the wood with the force of a falling boulder. CRASH. Two of the thick pine logs snapped completely in half. The wood exploded inward in a shower of sharp splinters.

The militia men on the platform screamed and scrambled backward as the wall gave way. A massive, gaping hole was torn directly into the defenses of the village. The burning mountain bear stepped through the breach, its massive jaws dripping with saliva. Behind it, three elite dire wolves and another bear prepared to pour through the opening. The village square was exposed. The militia was falling back in terror. Barnaby was still desperately trying to winch the second ballista back.

Up on his castle, Jack watched the wall fail. He knew that if he tried to manually take control of the dead boars in the moat to fight the bears, the sheer willpower required to suppress that many massive, fresh wild souls would instantly fry his brain and drop him to his knees. He didn't have the mental bandwidth for it. But he didn't need to manually control the battlefield anymore. He had an general on the ground. Jack locked his eyes on the dark figure standing perfectly still near the gatehouse.

He pushed a single, sharp command down the thin mental tether connected to his Iron Core.

"Kill them."